


nefarious

by Hope



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-22
Updated: 2005-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:36:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/1999/10/22.html"><b>nefarious</b></a> \nuh-FERR-ee-us\, <i>adjective</i>:<br/>Wicked in the extreme; abominable; iniquitous; atrociously villainous; execrable; detestably vile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nefarious

Simon always gets a sense of vertigo descending into Haven; the burn of sun reflecting on the sandy surface echoing in his retinas despite the only brief exposure to the image, wearing off slowly as Wash lowers Serenity into the mine shaft.  _HAVEN_, the name of it, carved into the rocky wall at the point where light no longer reaches through the mouth of the shaft, as if everything below were the settlement itself, instead of the houses and church above.

And the smell of the mine as Serenity's cargo door eases open, all of them already there waiting to be let out into the dark; the stale, almost-stagnant water on the sweating rock, the ozone scent of the movement of machinery, and burning oil from the torches set there before them, wicked orange.

The settlement was a regular (if not necessarily frequent) port of Serenity's call long before Simon brought River aboard the ship, and by the first time they landed there after he'd arrived, he'd become canny enough to not have to ask Zoe the history of the place.  Her and Mal get that dark, still look in their eyes when they're talking to the people there sometimes, and other times they laugh loud and openly within closed circles of people around a fire, Jayne and even Wash excluded.  Sometimes they ask for Simon's help; and he takes his cue from what Mal leaves unspoken in his requests and treats the patients there as if they were crew, treating old wounds manifesting as pain in phantom limbs and sleeplessness from night terrors.

The first time he saw Haven was one of the last times he saw Shepherd Book, their visits less and less frequent after that first long goodbye.  The second time Book looks older, lines around his mouth grimmer, the hair braided back against his skull throwing the lines of his brow into sharp relief.  Simon's sitting with River, in one of her still, melancholy moods when she folds something into Book's hand without saying anything.  When he opens the fist she's closed around it Simon sees in the firelight that it's a tiny figure of a unicorn, folded from the blue and white torn paper of one of their coffee tins.  He just looks at her and gives her an odd smile, and when Simon looks back from River's responding expression (a quirk of her mouth, eyes dark and clear), Book's slipped the paper creature out of sight, and doesn't mention it again.

The third time Simon doesn't leave the ship, just waits with the dark pressing in around them as River sleeps on the cold grill in the storage cabinet, Simon's breath loud and painful in the small space, the handcuffs digging into the delicate skin of her wrists making his fingers ache, making it hard for him to move or think.

The fourth time they don't descend into the mine, and its as if the darkness within it has bubbled up and broken the surface; the orange flames smouldering shingled roofs, still puddles of black, burnt and bleeding flesh, unmoving on the sand.  Simon's eyes can't adjust, he can't stop squinting, and the scar the downed Alliance ship has left in the surface of the settlement makes him ache somehow with a pain he realises he's forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/36590.html


End file.
